So, if I understand correctly, the RTC is a chip powered by the battery. I think there's something I don't get about it - how come then that for example someone's M3 Lite works fine, only the RTC chip is dead? Shouldn't the cart be dead as well? And if EZ(EFA) II is rechargable, that means as long as you recharge it in the cycle of 3 months, it'll never die,including the RTC? I'm sorry if it may sound stupid, I just had always thought the two things were the same before.

Um, and about the GBA exp. pack : how does it autopatch the games? Does it just make them work, or is it actually that good enough to connect it to the internal DS battery and make it actually work like in the real cart, coutning days and time?

And one last thing: how do you know which battery should you replace in the cart? Is there any list and/or guide?

For your first part read the last line of the previous post. Flashcarts are like USB drives, you think they are gonna die when you pull it out of the USB port? Even rechargable batteries die.

The M3 program you use to put the game on the microSD does the auto patching, it doesn't work for game types it doesn't know how to handle, that means there are a handful of games that you have to manually patch. In general, most RTC capable flashcarts already support everything under the sun, except for a few games with some special attachment or something.

As for a battery guide, that depends on what skills you got with a soldering iron. If you don't have any skills with one, a guide will not do you any good since you can't apply it.

I know this may sound stupid, but I thought before that by battery you meant that in the EZ II(EFA) they work like the typical rechargable ones, for example the AA's you use in GBA, which can last forever if you keep on recharging them; while the batteries in other carts die eventually like non-rechargable AAs. So even rechargable flashcarts can die, unlike AA's, do I get it now?

Now, I went to Wiki (I suddenly remembered its existence ) and read up on RTC, but unfortunately I couldn't find a topic about GBA cartridges. It said, that it is powered by lithium battery (now the thing which you said raised another question), and then it continued "The alternate power source can also supply power to battery backed RAM." So that means the chip itself can power the cartridge as well?

And the "raised" question is : so the RTC has its own battery, which is separate from the battery which powers the game and enables saving? So that's why RTC may not work but it'll still save?

Um, about USB drives - I thought they never die...except the ones (like mine with in-built MP3) with AA/AAA batteries inside them which you either have to recharge or replace. There. Sorry if I made it sound stupid or complicated.

So, by the M3 program you mean that every M3 cart can be patched, right? And, when it's patched, does it actually make the cart count days and all? Because I heard that some patches only make it work, and you have to manually change the days and time.

About soldering - well, I think my friend should be able to do it, he said he did that kind of thing at school during classes. Yay.

Thank you very much for your patience once again.

EDIT: I just remembered, that probably the guy who said the RTC doesn't work on M3 Lite but still saves, uses SD, so I think maybe he meant that it doesn't save "normally" into internal classical memory like in normal carts, but it gets saved into the SD and that' s why it still can save. Am I right? Are normally the RTC + saving connected, and if one dies, the other one does as well?

there is only 1 battery in a flashcart. it powers the SRAM and the RTC.

The patch you heard about that changes the time etc, is the RTC patch for flashcarts without RTC.

All M3 slot2/GBA flashcarts have RTC EXCEPT the M3 gba expansion.

The gbatemp wiki at the moment is incomplete, I have only been correcting some of it, though I might as well do whole pages on the flashcarts.

EZ-II IS NOT the same as the EFA, though they both have rechargable batteries.

I'll probably put a battery maintainace guide or something in the wiki and in the forum when I can get to it.

To answer the alternate power source question, no. The DS/GBA/SP battery powers access to the flashcart allowing you access to its info yes, but you lose access to that power when you turn the system off. It is pretty much like a computer, the power supply supplies the comp power to run and function but when you turn it off anything in RAM will disappear, hence the boot up sequence. The battery found on a motherboard powers the clock so it keeps accurate system time even when the computer is turned off for long periods of time. Because the flashcart is so small and the power requirements for the SRAM and RTC is so small, it can be powered by the single coin cell battery.

Well, since all batteries can die, I think it'll be better to go for the M3 Lite, as it can hold more games than EFA II and has better homebrew support, plus in-built Goomba. And I won't have to worry about the saves getting lost if I forget to recharge.

About the M3 GBA exp. pack - it seems very strange, as on various sites they say that it either does or doesn't contain RTC, for example here http://dsdatabase.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1137 it says that the first sample didn't have it, but the second sample did, it worked perfectly and you didn't have to adjust time manually, but it worked on its own. And since PharaohsVizier doesn't say there that he patched it manually, if it had been patched automatically, shouldn't had it worked for the first sample as well? I'm really at loss about it.

Oh, and I probably made a mistake in the heading, it was supposed to be the EFA Linker II, 1G, not the EZ II, so I apologise about that. I'll go and look up (if the reviews are correct) what's the difference.

Like the 3in1, I have every M3 gba exp board made, there are only 2 revisions and neither one has a RTC chip in them. The RTC is easily identified on the PCB as a 8 legged chip either near the crystal or next to the Actel chip.

Yes you have to RTC patch pokemon games for the M3 to play, the M3 loader does SRAM patching for most games it knows the offsets to, not RTC patching. You might be confusing RTC (Real Time Clock) with RTS (Real Time Save), those are two different things. RTS is like the Save Game function in VBA, you can save at any point even if your not close to a normal save point designated by the game like save rooms in Metroid.

EZ-II is made by EZ Flash, and the EFA Linker II was made by the EFA group now defunct. Alot of the naming is the same due to most, not all of them, flashcart devs jump from one group and formed another for what ever reason. It also helps sells when people are confused over the naming, like the majority of cloners using the R4 name for slot1 flashcarts.

I'm not confusing the two(RTC and RTS), and to directly quote from the link I posted :

'The M3 Expansion Pack has the advantage of having a real time clock. My last review sample did not have this feature. I assume that it is new, in either case, it works great. Games that utilize the real time clock, notably Pokemon, run flawlessly flawlessly with the full night and day cycles. And it also supports a cheats and real time save.'

So this is what gets me baffled, because I read it in every second review of the exp. pack I can find. ...

Anyway, thanks for the EZ/EFA clarification.

By the way, your last sentence sounds very sarcastic. I was happy to learn the new things which you told me, I thanked you, and instead of you being happy that you were so kind and helped me you sound so cold. I don't get it.

Well, we learned at school that oxymoron is when you use two contradicting words, like happy sadness, and when something changes by context, it's something else which I can't remember. But anyway, it doesn't really matter I think, the thing which matters for me is that you've been very helpful and nice.

Well, since they say the exp. pack is so good, I'll wait till I buy DS in June, and if the gba pack won't be up to my expactations, then I'll go for the M3 Lite - as I mentioned in first post in my other thread few days ago, in Ishopvideogame both people commented it badly - the first guy had the battery die after one hour and the second one had parts missing. But thanks for the suggestion